A Collection of Awards to Merchant Seamen and D.E.M.S. Gunners

Four: Chief Engineer H. Pollard, Mercantile Marine and Royal Naval Reserve, who lost his life on the occasion H.M.S. Viknor was mined in January 1915 - which ship had recently apprehended a member of the Imperial German Secret Service after intercepting a Norwegian vessel

1914-15 Star (Ch. Eng. H. Pollard, R.N.R.); British War and Victory Medals (Ch. Eng. H. Pollard, R.N.R.), in their card boxes of issue with Admiralty forwarding letter , together with the recipient’s Memorial Plaque 1914-18 (Henry Pollard), in its card sleeve and registered envelope, the Victory Medal with officially re-impressed naming, extremely fine (4)
£200-250

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to Merchant Seamen and D.E.M.S. Gunners.

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Henry Pollard was born in Liverpool in 1885, where he served time as a fitter, prior to entering the service of the White Star Line with an appointment as Sixth Engineer in the Majestic in July 1906. Having then completed 18 trips in that capacity to New York, he removed to the Cedric in October 1910, and completed another 24 cross-Atlantic runs, latterly as an Assistant Second Engineer.

Sometime prior to the outbreak of the Great War, however, he transferred to the Viking Cruising Company, and was appointed to the company’s flagship Viknor, aboard which he would have participated in cruises to Scandinavia - although her final itinerary, planned for August 1914, was a visit to Kiel. Be that as it may, he was similarly employed as the ship’s Chief Engineer in January 1915. Poole’s Armed Merchant Cruisers takes up the story:

‘The Viknor, 5,300 tons, was the oldest of the auxiliary cruisers. Built as the Viking, flagship of the Viking Cruising Company, she had been renamed H.M.S. Viknor to avoid confusion with the F (Tribal) class destroyer H.M.S. Viking. She could make 17 knots if asked nicely, and had some life in her old bones yet.

Early in the misty forenoon of 11 January Viknor's "man in the barrel" up the foremast sighted a ship. Viknor altered course to head her off. As the old A.M.C., straining her rivets, came up with the stranger, she began to look more and more like the Bergens-fjord. Her funnel was yellow, with the red, white and blue stripes of the Norwegian-American Line.

In clear weather a red flag hoisted at the yard meant "Stop engines!" In murky conditions or at night the orders were to fire a rocket or a blank from one of the guns to produce the same effect. Viknor fired a rocket, so as to keep all her guns, loaded with live rounds, at the ready in case of trouble. The red flare burst above the bows of the white-hulled vessel. If this failed, the next move was a live shot across her bows.

The rocket did the trick. Viknor beat to windward and lowered a boat with a boarding party. They found that the stranger was indeed the elusive Norwegian. Viknor reported the news, and Alsatian, Patia and Teutonic converged at full speed on the position.

Meanwhile the Norwegian Captain tried to bluff it out. "Why should I go into Kirkwall and add many days to my voyage? What will my owners say?"

The boarding officers suspected that he had a more pressing reason for avoiding inspection. They checked the ship's papers with the Captain, while the men of their party chatted to the crew to see what information they could pick up. A thorough search of the ship revealed six stowaways, all German, some hiding in the lifeboats, and an interrogation of the passengers uncovered the suspected reservists with their forged passports. Pick of the bunch and a bonus for Admiralty Intelligence was the poorly disguised Baron von Wedell of the Imperial Secret Service.

The Viknor, low on coal after the chase, continued southwards en route for Liverpool. At 4 p.m. on 13 January she called up with a position north of Tory Island, off north-western Ireland, as she steered for the North Channel and home. She was never heard from again. Five days later bodies of some of her ship's company and wreckage were washed ashore near Portrush off the mouth of Lough Foyle. No mention of a sinking in her area was ever found in any U-boat's logbook, and she could well have been a victim of one of the mines laid by the Berlin which had sunk the Audacious in the same area. The Viknor was the first of the conscript cruisers to go.’

Pollard, who was 29 years old, left a widow, Sarah, and is commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial. His campaign awards and Memorial Plaque were claimed by his daughter in 1924.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including the recipient’s Board of Trade Continuous Certificate of Discharge, with entries for the Liverpool-New York run aboard Majestic and Cedric in 1906-10, together with three card mounted portrait photographs, including one with his wife, two photographs of family visits to his ship, a White Star Line post card of the Cedric, a newspaper cutting regarding the loss of the Viknor, and a file of research.